


i just knew i'd find you here

by shrill_fangirl_screaming



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, Hospitalstuck, Humanstuck, Sadstuck, cancerstuck, no shipping in this one sorry, pretty sad-making
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-19
Updated: 2013-06-19
Packaged: 2017-12-15 11:47:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/849204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shrill_fangirl_screaming/pseuds/shrill_fangirl_screaming
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Calliope is a patient in a local hospital with leukemia. Roxy Lalonde volunteers to help brighten her days.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i just knew i'd find you here

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Humanstuck AU](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/23521) by intergalactickoala (tumblr). 



“Uh, hi,” Roxy says to the woman at the front desk. The room is a cold, sterile white that makes Roxy uncomfortable in her black and pink. “My sister made me- um, I’m v- volunteering in the, uh, c- cancer kid ward, um…”

The nurse guarding the desk looks up and hands her a clipboard. “Sign in, please.” As Roxy scrawls her name on the page- damn fucking dyslexia- the nurse says, “Okay, you’re in room 413. Her name is Calliope.” Upon receiving her clipboard, the nurse squints at the page. “Your name is illegible.”

Roxy blinks her eyes hard. It feels just like school, fucking perfect. “I’m R-Roxy. Roxanne Lal-lalonde.”

The nurse quirks one eye but lets it go. In that way, Roxy thinks, this must be better than school. No one complains here about her stutter.

Roxy wanders down the halls until she finds room 413, and knocks before pushing it open.

The room is dismal. It’s even cleaner and whiter than the lobby she was just in, and there’s nothing in the small room but a curtain, a hospital bed, and the poor girl living here- Calliope. She’s paler than anyone Roxy’s ever seen, with a head shaved bald and an IV attached to her arm. The girl looks out the one big window, which overlooks the gardens outside the hospital. Roxy doesn’t know which would be worse, being stuck in here with nothing or seeing life go on without you.

Calliope hears her enter and turns to look. She grins. “Hi!”

“H-h-hi,” Roxy stammers.

For whatever reason, Calliope’s smile keeps growing, stretching across her bony, pale face. “Can you help me with something?”

Roxy gulps and nods, managing to get out, “That’s, uh, w-what I’m h-here for.”

“I can’t read in here. It makes my head ache. Can you read me stories?” It’s only now that Roxy realizes how young Calliope really is- she couldn’t be more than ten. Roxy is sixteen and feels ancient.

Even with the dyslexia and stammer, Roxy can’t deny this dying child her stories. She probably just aches for the company- Roxy would. “Uh, sure, Ca-calliope. Y-you might have to be, um, uh, patient w-with me.”

Calliope shakes her head- slowly. “Your voice is nice. Also, I’m Callie.”

Roxy barely manages not to roll her eyes. Her voice is by no stretch of the imagination pretty, but what does this little kid know? “All right, Ca-callie. Whaddaya got?”  
There is a small pile of books hiding behind her IV, pooling under Callie’s bed. Callie points, and Roxy picks one up at random. Running one finger across the bottom of the words as her teachers always suggest (like she’s a fucking kindergartener), Roxy reads, “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. Sound g-good?”

Callie nods and pats the bed next to her, scooting to the side and pulling her knees up to her chest. Roxy smiles tentatively, as if not quite sure how to go about doing so, but sits next to the girl, on the very edge of the bed.

“Chapter One… the boy who lived… Mr. and Mrs. D-Dursley, Dursley, of number four, Priv-Privet Drive, were proud to say that they w-were perfectly…” Roxy reads, internally cursing her dyslexia, like normal. Her chain of frustration is slowly growing, feeding off itself when suddenly, Callie’s head falls onto Roxy’s shoulder. As Roxy reads, the girl cuddles up against Roxy even more, until she is almost falling asleep. Her frustration fades like a dream.

Roxy gets through chapter 10, Halloween, that day before Callie needs to go to some sort of therapy.

The next day, Roxy fights her way through the rest of the book. When it finally closes, Callie sighs and smiles.

“W-what did you think, Callie?” Roxy asks with a smile. “Was it g-good?”

Roxy feels the girl’s nod against her shoulder more than she sees it. “You’re a good reader.”

“You m-must have had some p-pretty bad r-readers, then, Callie,” Roxy says through her giggles. She can't keep herself from laughing at the girl.

Again, Roxy feels the girl’s bony shoulders move up and down against her bicep as Callie shrugs. “No one’s ever really ever read to me before. The nurses would get bored and tell me to sit still, and Caliborn was always too busy.”

“Who’s c-ca-caliborn?” This is the first time Callie had mentioned any sort of life outside of the hospital, her nurses, and her books. To be honest, Roxy had kind of forgotten that a sick child should constantly be crowded by family.

Callie sits up a bit, pulling her knees in tightly to her chest. “He’s kind of my brother.”

“Kind of?”

Callie looks uncomfortable and doesn’t meet Roxy’s eyes, but she answers, “He’s really big. Bigger than you. And he’s really mean. The nurses call him names when they think I’m not listening. I haven’t seen him since… since I came here.” Callie gestures at her omnipresent IV, the stark white walls, the hospital bed.

Roxy’s heart breaks just a little. “That’s why I like Harry Potter,” Callie says, “He doesn’t have anybody, just like me.”

Very seriously, Roxy meets the girl’s eyes and grasps her hand. “Calliope Ursula Umbra, I hereby adopt you into the Lalonde family. Granted, it’s me, Mom, and Rose, but still. Family’s family.”

Callie’s eyes well with tears and suddenly Roxy’s stomach is being compressed by a pair of bony and weak arms. “Thank you thank you thank you thank you,” Callie says into Roxy’s stomach, “You are the most beautiful person I’ve ever met.”

Roxy smiles and pulls away. Booping Callie on the nose, she replies, “N-no, you are.”

Callie’s grin fades and she gets the look in her eyes that kids get when they know they are being patronized. “I know I’m not. I have the…” she trails off, looking at her IV while running a hand over her smooth white scalp.

This feels wrong to Roxy. On one level, she understands that no, the girl is not Miss America, but on another level she cannot think of Callie as anything but beautiful. Roxy casts her eyes around until she remembers she’s wearing her favorite shirt, white with the mutated pink cat. Rose got it for her last Christmas.

“Callie, d-d-do you like my s-shirt?” Roxy asks, tugging on it.

Callie nods. Roxy smiles and says, “The c-cat on it is kinda s-s-sick, l-like you.” She points to its extra set of eyes. “Pretty, though, r-right?”

Roxy can see that Callie doesn’t believe her, but it’s good enough for now.

After the first four Harry Potter books and a month, Callie gets worse and Roxy gets better. They agree to stop after the fourth one because the fifth is too long for Roxy to read and Callie to listen to. Instead, they sit as Roxy makes up her own ending, one that involves Callie swooping in and saving the day instead of Harry. When she’s making things up, not reading, her stutter gets worse again, but Callie doesn’t mind.

Callie is weaker than a kitten now. Roxy usually helps her sit up and supports most of her weight when she does. Sometimes Callie has a cannula feeding her oxygen, or their sessions are interrupted by a doctor racing in to help Callie with something-or-other- Roxy never knows what, but she sits beside the girl and squeezes her hand tight, tears prickling hot around her eyes. 

Her asshole of a brother never shows up, and from what Roxy has gleaned from Callie and her nurses, Roxy hopes he never does. The bastard didn’t take her to the doctor often enough (ever, Roxy thinks but stays silent) which allowed Callie’s leukemia to get worse and worse unchecked. When finally forced to admit his kid sister was desperately ill, he abandoned her at the hospital. No one had been able to get a hold of him.

Roxy’s reading improves just for Callie. Every second she can’t be by Callie’s bedside, Roxy is at summer school that her teachers have been begging for her to take, working hard at pronouncing words- even the hard ones- and reading, reading everything until some days she wakes up with a crackling, dying voice that only smooths out after about a gallon of honeyed tea. When the teachers are too busy for Roxy, her older sister Rose sits down and helps her read and talk. They usually don’t talk much, but Roxy knows she’ll always owe Rose this.

Roxy and Callie moved on to fairy tales, which Callie likes better anyway and are easier for them to fit in around conversations. She has a massive book of fairy tales that Roxy picks random ones out of to tell.

“Hey, Callie!” Roxy says on their first day of reading not-Harry Potter. “How are y-you doing, pretty girl?”

Callie is lying on the bed, eyes half closed. When she hears Roxy, her eyes flicker open and she strains to see her friend. “Is it just me, or is it longer between each time I see you?”  
Callie’s slowly getting less lucid, making sentences that make less and less sense, but Roxy has followed her and barely notices. Doesn’t notice, not enough.

“J-Just you. Guess who I b-brought today? S-Snuck him past F-Front Desk Lady again, she didn’t e-even notice.” Carefully, Roxy pulls her pet cat, Jaspers, out of her basket and places him on Callie’s lap. For reasons unknown to Roxy, Callie absolutely adores the cat. The little girl grins as the black cat delicately sniffs her nose. Her bony hand strokes Jaspers’ back and he curls up by her chin.

Roxy sits next to the girl and runs one hand over the back of Callie’s head. “Wanna do some f-fairy tales? I have one a-about a girl a-almost as pretty as you. Snow W-White.”  
Callie smiles as Roxy pulls her up to a more seated position. The girl drapes herself on Roxy’s side, the cat curling up in her lap. “Once upon a time, w- when the snow lay thick and white up- upon the ground…”

Callie dozes through Roxy’s story, smiling and sighing in reaction so Roxy knows she’s not asleep. Callie never truly falls asleep around Roxy, her mind always aware even if her eyes close and her body rests. 

That reassures Roxy when she wakes from a nightmare- Callie’s mind is still sharp. “And so, the evil queen was v-vankw-vanquished, and the people, uh, re-rejoiced. And Snow White and her prince lived happily ever after.” Roxy shut the book quietly and asked Callie, “What do you think?”

Callie’s eyes shot open and fixed themselves on Roxy’s. “Do you think I’ll ever get one of those?”

“A prince?” Roxy asks.

“A story,” Callie explains. Roxy doesn’t answer for a moment, stroking Callie’s lovely bald head. It’s warmer than the rest of her body, and softer than silk. Rose knitted a beanie for Callie, but it usually lays draped on her IV to wear only when the girl is cold.

Finally, Roxy does what is easiest and lies to herself. “Of course you will,” Roxy says, kissing the girl’s forehead, “Yuh-you’re a fighter, Callie, n-never forget that.”  
Callie grins, showing her bright white teeth, and Roxy’s heart soars.

Next is Red Riding Hood and Goldilocks, and because these are the original Grimm fairytales, Roxy has to make up some endings to avoid scarring the poor girl. 

Like usual, Roxy asks, “What do you think?” once she finishes.

Callie runs one wistful hand over her head. “I used to have gold hair like the girl in the story.”

Roxy knows that tone. It’s the Callie-is-ugly tone. Roxy hates that she lives in a world where a leukemic ten year old girl worries about her looks, but she does and she needs to make Callie not sad. “N-none of that, Callie, you’re guh-gorgeous.”

Callie laughs a little. “I’m bony and white and bald.”

“Yes,” Roxy replies solemnly. “And Callie, you are the most b-beautiful girl in this world, I p-promise.”

“Your stutter’s better,” Callie says, changing the subject. 

Roxy lets her. She grins at the girl and doesn’t tell her about the battle for her stutter but simply says, “P-practice makes perfect, m-my sister Rose says.”

Letting her eyes droop, Callie says, “I like that. Maybe someday I’ll meet your sister.”

Rose would never be caught dead in a hospital. She hates them with a fiery passion. “Maybe,” Roxy allows.

Roxy never forgets the first day Callie isn’t lucid. The girl never falls asleep on Roxy, not once, but she can barely understand the fairy tales Roxy reads from the Grimm storybook. They are too dense with words that the girl can’t quite remember the meanings to. Roxy puts the thick book on the ground and pulls Callie into her lap instead, and fills the intervening hours with stories of her own creation.

When she gets home that day, Rose holds her as she cries her eyes out. Until this point, Rose honestly hadn’t considered the possibility of her little friend not getting better.

The next day Roxy walks in braced for the worst, but Callie is better. Not Better, as in Cured, but better than she was. “Hey,” she croaks as Roxy walks in.

“Hi, sweetie,” Roxy whispers, creeping around to her bed. She sits on the side and locks one of the little girl’s hands in hers, trying to anchor her to the world of the living.

Callie smiles. “No stutter.”

Roxy shakes her head and says, “It’s still here somewhere. N-not always, though.”

“Fixed you,” Callie says, half asleep.

“You made me realize that it was a problem,” Roxy says. “Now let me fix you.”

Callie helps Roxy move her head to the other girl’s thigh. “Kay.”

Without picking up a book, Roxy starts telling Callie her daily dose of stories. These are sort of fairytales, stories that Roxy makes up on the spot combining Caliborn and leukemia as bad guys and Roxy and Jaspers as sidekicks and a triumphant, gorgeous Callie as a hero. The stories never really begin and never really end, but continue on in a dreamlike way. Roxy stays longer than she means to, longer than she ever has, long enough for the sun to set behind Callie’s window and a nurse to come in and politely kick Roxy out. The second Roxy leaves, Callie is asleep.

“Why didn’t she have any treatments today?” Roxy asks the nurse as she is escorted back to the front of the hospital. It is dark now, with no one moving through the halls. Roxy feels like a ghost.

The nurse looks at her with an odd expression. Carefully picking her words, she says, “There’s not much we can do for the poor girl at this stage…”

Roxy refuses to understand what that sentence means, and doesn’t press the issue.

That night at one AM, Roxy is awoken by a call from the hospital. “Roxy Lalonde? I’m so sorry… Calliope Umbra is fading in and out of consciousness. I was told you would like to be informed.”

Roxy doesn’t even say anything, or change. She’s in a car speeding to the hospital before the woman is even done talking. She’s barefoot and messy and in her pajamas and doesn’t have her license or keys or anything but she needs to be at the hospital right now.

She walks into Callie’s room and it is heartbreakingly empty. The little girl is stretched out on her bed, her arm hooked to the IV, a heart monitor beeping lethargically in the background. The lights aren’t on in the room, so Callie’s face is lit only by the glow from the moon outside.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

“Callie?” Roxy barely breathes the word. She doesn’t know which would be worse, waking Callie just before she dies or not being able to talk to Callie just before she dies.

“Roxy?” Callie asks, and Roxy’s heart leaps to her throat. “Can you help me with something?” The words are slurred and quiet but sure. They are the same words Callie used to invite Roxy into her world when they first met. “Can you read Snow White again?”

This is the first time Callie has asked to repeat a story.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

Callie nods and picks up the heavy Grimm brothers book. Gently, she tucks the little girl against her side again. One of Roxy’s hands is holding one of Callie’s, the other carefully running under each line of text. Their feet are propped up on a hard plastic chair always sitting in Callie’s room. Roxy had asked to have it removed, fearing it would remind the girl of Caliborn, but then she herself used it too often to make a real fuss. 

The story was long, but far too short. As Roxy read, voice nearly free of stutter thanks to this little girl, Callie’s head drops slowly into the join between Roxy’s shoulder and neck. Her eyes flutter shut and Roxy’s stomach turns to lead before Callie says, “Roxy?”

“Yeah, sweetie?”

“If I fall asleep, will a prince come and wake me up?” Callie’s voice is small in the room, and it bounces oddly against the walls with the constant noise of the heart monitor.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

Roxy smiles at the little girl and says, “Someone would have to be blind to not kiss this beautiful girl awake.”

Her smile trembles as Callie breathes, “Thank you,” and doesn’t speak again.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep.

The drone’s meaning doesn’t really register with Roxy until a doctor has already come in and switched it off. The squad of nurses and doctors come in silently, which is very good for them because if they had woken Callie Roxy would have smacked them. The poor girl could use all the rest she can get.

One nurse approaches Roxy and says quietly, “Honey, it’s time for you to go home.”

“If I move, I’ll wake Callie up,” Roxy whispers. She doesn’t know why they’re being so loud.

The nurse shakes her head and says gently, “No, you won’t.”

Dimly, Roxy registers that tears are rolling down her cheeks, that her chest and shoulders are shaking with sobs. She sits hard on the plastic chair as the nurses and doctors array Callie neatly on her bed. She’s so small. She’s so still. A small part of Roxy still thinks that the girl is asleep, that tomorrow will be another round of stories and laughs and fairytales.

They cover her face with a white towel. No one can kiss her awake now.

They wheel Callie away. Roxy can’t move.

She doesn’t until Rose shows up. “Roxy,” Rose says in a voice Roxy has never heard before. “Roxy, it’s time to go home.”

“I can’t,” Roxy said, and then she lost it. She fell into her sister’s arms and cried, and didn’t think she’d ever actually be able to stop.


End file.
